These guys don’t rock

Fleet Foxes are not your typical toast of Seattle.

For starters, they don’t rock. At all. Not even slightly.

Frontman Robin Pecknold describes the sound as “baroque harmonic pop.”

It doesn’t sound like anything from this hemisphere or even this generation, as concertgoers will find out when Fleet Foxes opens for Wilco on Thursday at the INB Performing Arts Center.

The only thing it has in common with Wilco is that Fleet Foxes doesn’t have much in common with anyone else in music today.

The band’s influences point directly to ’60s boomer music, The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, The Zombies, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, Bob Dylan and Crosby Still & Nash.

There is guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass, drums, and electric piano, but the emphasis is on the lush three- and four-part vocal harmonies. Pecknold’s voice is the one that rises to the top, but truly there is no lead singer.

After just two years of existence, Fleet Foxes have the Seattle scene on lockdown. They made deep impressions at high-profile festivals such as Bumbershoot, Sasquatch, South by Southwest, Pitchfork Music Festival, and some huge thing in Norway. Released in June, the Fleet Foxes self-titled Sub Pop debut garnered high praise; 4 stars from Rolling Stone and a 9/10 rating from Pitchfork.

Pecknold pens songs about friends, family, the Pacific Northwest, and the outdoors in general. The music is a liquid elemental, best described in the band’s bio as a capture of snow slowly melting into a meandering river, then rushing rapids.

But whatever you do, don’t call them hippies.

Pecknold hates hippies.

When The Stranger posted a live stream of a Fleet Foxes concert, the first response from a listener commented on Pecknold’s floppy brown hat he wore during the Bumbershoot Performance: “Fleet Foxes are so awesome except for the part where they ran off with Chris Robinson’s dowry.”

The next comment was posted by Pecknold (who, as one Stranger writer described, sports a full Jesus beard to go with his long Jesus-y hair): “I resent and apologize for that hat. I also can’t claim to own any topaz, turquoise, rings of any sort, necklaces, dream catchers, peacock feathers, ponytail holders, or any of the other tchotchkes you might find in the Pandora’s box that is Robinson’s dowry. On that tip, though, isn’t it rad that ‘hippies’ nowadays define themselves by how many weird items they own/can wear at one time and not by any actual ideology? That it’s just a veiled version of rampant consumerism with no meaning? The hat, however, is inexcusable and will be burned.”

Fleet Foxes appears with Wilco on Thursday at 8 p.m. The INB. Tickets are $29 through TicketsWest, www.ticketswest.com, (509) 325-SEAT.

Read more about Wilco in this Sunday’s Spokesman-Review.